Aphorism 51-59 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical
Investigationswith commentary on the right by Lois Shawver

Wittgenstein:(Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to
enhance commentary.)

Shawver commentary:

51 In describing language-game (48) I said that the
words "R", "B", etc. corresponded to the colours of the squares. But what
does this correspondence consist in; in what sense can one say that
certain colours of squares correspond to these signs? For the account in (48) merely set
up (sic) a connexion between those signs and certain words of our language
(the names of colours).

What is the account in 48? It is where LW
says:

The squares form a complex like a chessboard. There are
red, green, white and black squares. The words of the language are
(correspondingly) "R", "G", "W", "B", and a sentence is a series of
these words. They describe an arrangement of squares in the order:
[see (48)]

Can
you see how this sets up what we are going to call the components of the
chessboard? We are told, specifically, that "there are red, green...
squares." So we have been told what we are to consider the parts of
the chessboard.

-- Well, it was presupposed that the use of the signs in the language-game
would be taught in a different way, in particular by pointing to
paradigms.

Our Augustinian mythology about language says that we
are taught how to use words (signs) by pointing and naming and here we are
being "taught" contextually without our noticing.

Very well; but what does it mean to say that in the technique of using
the language certain elements correspond to the signs? --Is it that the
person who is describing the complexes of coloured squares always
says "R" where there is a red square; "B" when there is a black one, and
so on?

Notice this phrase "certain elements correspond to the
signs." It's a common way of putting things but what does it
mean? Is there a universal meaning to this phrase?

But what if he goes wrong in the description and mistakenly says "R" where
he sees a black square --what is the criterion by which this is a
mistake? --Or does "R"s standing for a red square consist in this, that
when the people whose language it is use the sign "R" a red square always
comes before their minds?

If someone mistakenly calls a black square "R" in what
sense is this a mistake? If you have been drawn into the language
game of 48 by the account and you recognize that someone is mistaken in
calling a black square "R," how do you know this? Is it the case
that a red square comes before your mind?

In order to see more clearly,
here as in countless similar cases, we must focus on the details of what
goes on; must look at them from close to.

Here LW is teaching us not to accept the answer above
without examining what happens in these
situations.

52. If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has
come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust, I
shall do well to examine those rags very closely to see how a mouse may
have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on. But if I am
convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this
investigation will perhaps be superfluous.

Here LW is continuing with his last comment from 50. Even
if we see that we have bought into a certain cultural mythology that
distorts our vision, this does not mean that we can find our way out of
it. How do we do it? if we think that mice spontaneously
generate in gray rags, and we're convinced of this, it might be
superfluous to examine the rags

But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an
examination of details in philosophy.

The first thing we have to do is understand what gets
in our way seeing what is happening.

53. Our language-game (48) has various
possibilities; there is a variety of cases in which we should say that a
sign in the game was the name of a square of such-and-such a colour. We
should say so if, for instance, we knew that the people who used the
language were taught the use of the signs in such-and-such a way. Or if it
were set down in writing, say in the form of a table, that this element
corresponded to this sign, and if the table were used in teaching the
language and were appealed to in certain disputed cases.

How do we know that "R" means that a particular square
should be colored "red"? We can imagine it coming about that "we
know this" in a variety of ways (other than the insidious account we have
discovered above). We might say this on the basis of certain
Augustinian language practices that we had observed in the tribe.
That is, we might have noticed that the tribe points and names squares "R"
until the children learn to do this. Or if it were set down in
writing that red squares should be called "R." Then this is how we would
know that this is what they should be called (imagine a dictionary).

We can also imagine such a table's being a tool in the use of the
language. Describing a complex is then done like this: the person who
describes the complex has a table with him and looks up each element of
the complex in it and passes from this to the sign (and the one who is
given the description may also use a table to translate it into a picture
of coloured squares).

The complex is like the grid we say in 48, it is a
cluster of elements arranged in a predefined way. How will one
describe the complex to another who must arrange, say, a copy? One
might look at the complex and then look up each element in a table.

This table might be said to take over here the role of memory and
association in other cases. (We do not usually carry out the order "Bring
me a red flower" by looking up the colour red in a table of colours and
then bringing a flower of the colour that we find in the table; but when
it is a question of choosing or mixing a particular shade of red, we do
sometimes make use of a sample or table.)

Whereas ordinarily we rely on our memories to
recognize simple colors like "red," we do sometimes use a tool such as
this when we are trying to get the exact shade.

If we call such a table the expression of a rule of the language-game,
it can be said that what we call a rule of a language-game may have very
different roles in the game.

Wittgenstein is setting up this table as a model of
rule in a language-game and he will use this model in subsequent
text.

54. Let us recall the kinds of case
where we say that a game is played according to a definite rule.

A definite rule is one that is set out explicitly that
everyone agrees on.

The rule may be an aid in teaching the game. The learner is told it
and given practice in applying it.

Say I explain before we begin that the rule is that
when you type your comments you should enclose them in brackets with your
initials. The rule is an aid I devise in assisting our study, but it
is not a part of the language-game, in the sense that we could easily
devise other devices that would work just as well. It would not
change the playing of the language game in any important way if we used a
color code to keep track of who wrote which comment.

--Or it is an instrument of the game itself.

But an rule that is an instrument of the game itself
cannot be changed without changing the game. If the rule is that we
can ask each other questions and get answers then it would change our
language game if we changed the rule.

--Or a rule is employed neither in the teaching nor in the game
itself; nor is it set down in a list of rules. One learns the game by
watching how others play. But we say that it is played according to
such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules off from the
practice of the game-like a natural law governing the play. --But how does
the observer distinguish in this case between players' mistakes and
correct play? --There are characteristic signs of it in the
players' behaviour. Think of the behaviour characteristic of
correcting a slip of the tongue. It would be possible to recognize that
someone was doing so even without knowing his language.

Imagine a new reader noticing that everyone encloses
their comments within brackets that contain their initials and conforming
to this implicit rule. In that case, too, can we not, say that this
is "playing according to the rules"?

But in this case how do we know when people are playing correctly
according to the rules? Perhaps by the way people correct themselves
or other such recognizeable signs that people show they feel they have
violated the rules, even the implicit rules
(apologies?)

55. "What the names in language signify must be
indestructible; for it must be possible to describe the state of affairs
in which everything destructible is destroyed. And this description will
contain words; and what corresponds to these cannot then be destroyed,
for otherwise/the words would have no meaning." I must not saw off
the branch on which I am sitting.

55. Here LW is speaking again with his aporetic
voice, from within the fly bottle. But there is, you can see (can
you not?) a certain distance from this aporia. He is listening to
what he is inclined to say here.

He is inclined to say that there must be objects in the world that are
simple and indestructible (which are either true or false). Even if
I destroy Excalibur it must be the case that I at least have something
left that I can say is destroyed, fragments, smoke, something.

If we do not have these simple indestructible truths that we can point
to and name, then how can we continue? Our entire logic depends on
this. Or so it seems from within the fly bottle.

One might, of course, object at once that this description would have
to except itself from the destruction.

That is, if we destroyed everything and then described
the destruction, we could not destroy the description itself.

--But what corresponds to the separate words of the description and so
cannot be destroyed if it is true, is what gives the words their meaning
--- is that without which they would have no meaning. In a sense, however,
this man is surely what corresponds to his name. But he is destructible,
and his name does not lose its meaning when the bearer is destroyed

LW is still within his aporetic voice, expressing
wonder at these paradoxes he is entertaining. In this frame of mind
it seems that what corresponds to the separate words cannot be destroyed
if the words are true. "The Chair is in the corner." If
the words are true, then the chair cannot have been crushed until it is no
longer a chair. Still, and here's the perplexity, a name still has
meaning once the object is destroyed. How can this be?

--An example of something corresponding to the name, and without
which it would have no meaning, is a paradigm that is used in connexion
with the name in the language-game.

The standard meter in Paris gives us an example of
this paradigm. Or a sample of "sepia" that serves to define our
naming of colors. Samples like this can give meaning to a
word. Ask yourself: How long as a griset? If we had a
sample in Paris that told us, that word would have
meaning.

56. But what if no such sample is
part of the language, and we bear in mind the colour (for instance) that a
word stands for? --"And if we bear it in mind then it comes before
our mind's eye when we utter the word. (sic) So, if it is always supposed
to be possible for us to remember it, it must be in itself
indestructible."

This is LW's aporetic voice. Notice that
he often puts his aporetic voice in quotes, but he is inconsistent.
I put a (sic) after the "word" because I believe it should have a question
mark there. This is the cultural reasoning that puts the
indestructible simple in the mind. It is what gives Plato his
essences or eternal ideas.

--But what do we regard as the criterion for remembering it
right?

Here, LW is questioning his own aporetic voice.
This is a significant question and he will make much of it in other
contexts. If we have a sample of "red" say in our minds, and no
external sample, how do we know that we have remembered the right
color? The color that "red" is? Can you see that this would be
problematic? You can hold the red sample up to the apple and see
that the apple is the same color, but that works because the red sample
you are using is dependable. What if you have gotten confused and
the red sample in your mind is now distorted, you are thinking of it as
"rust." How would you know?

--When we work with a sample instead of our memory there are
circumstances in which we say that the sample has changed colour and we
judge of this by memory. But can we not sometimes speak of a darkening
(for example) of our memory-image? Aren't we as much at the mercy of
memory as of a sample? (For someone might feel like saying: "If we had no
memory we should be at the mercy of a sample".) --Or perhaps of some
chemical reaction. Imagine that you were supposed to paint a particular
colour "C", which was the colour that appeared when the chemical
substances X and Y combined.-Suppose that the colour struck you as
brighter on one day than on another; would you not sometimes say: "I must
be wrong, the colour is certainly the same as yesterday"? This shews that
we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the
highest court of appeal.

Here he is further exploring the question of whether
we can rely on memory as if it were a sample. We do sometimes
notices that colors have changed, he tells us, but we do not entirely
trust our observations. So, if we rely on memory as a sample, we
often do not feel very secure about it.

57. "Something red can be destroyed, but red
cannot be destroyed, and that is why the meaning of the word 'red' is
independent of the existence of a red thing."

The aporetic voice. Again, the emphasis is
mine. This is a paradigm (sample) case of the Platonic-Augustinian
muddle. What is it that cannot be destroyed? The color?
What color? In what way does the color exist apart from things that
are so colored?

-Certainly it makes no sense to say that the colour red is torn up or
pounded to bits. But don't we say "The red is vanishing"? And don't clutch
at the idea of our always being able to bring red before our mind's eye
even when there is nothing red any more. That is just as if you chose to
say that there would still always be a chemical reaction producing a red
flame.-For suppose you cannot remember the colour any more.;-When we
forget which colour this is the name of, it loses its meaning for us; that
is, we are no longer able to play a particular language-game with it. And
the situation then is comparable with that in which we have lost a
paradigm which was an instrument of our language.

Here's LW's clarifying voice. He is not really
giving us an answer here to the above question, but he is directing our
attention. If we are inclined to say (confusedly) that the red would
exist because it would still exist in our minds (because we could imagine
a red square still) then this neglects the fact that we sometimes cannot
recall the color. Suppose you suffered brain damage and it did not
destroy your color vision but you could no longer remember which color was
which. Would red then still exist?

58. "I want to restrict the term 'name' to what
cannot occur in the combination 'X exists'. --Thus one cannot say 'Red
exists', because if there were no red it could not be spoken of at
all."

Again, LW is using the quotes to indicate his aporetic
voice. This is the aporetic voice trying to patch things up so that
they work as our cultural picture says that they should. According
to this patch up job, we are going to say that the word "red" will lose
its meaning when there are no red objects. Will this work?

--Better: If "X exists" is meant simply to say: "X" has a meaning,

In other words, if the statement "Red exists" is true
then this means that "Red" has a meaning.

-then it is not a proposition which treats of X, but a proposition
about our use of language, that is, about the use of the word
"X".

But notice, this proposition does not talk about the
existence of "red". It is a move in setting up the language
game. It has nothing to do with the existence of red apart from this
new language game.

It looks to us as if we were saying something about the nature of
red in saying that the words "Red exists" do not yield a sense.
Namely that red does exist 'in its own right'.

Important passage. In 122 LW notices that
our grammar is lacking in a certain kind of perspecuity that would enable
us to more easily see what is going on. Here it is. The phrase
"Red exists" can be either a negotiation of the meaning of the term "Red
exists" or it can be a statement about the world -- but if it's a
statement about the world it has to be within a particular language
game.

We get confused, however, when we see that the statement "Red exists"
makes a kind of sense to it. The sense it seems to make when we
conflate the two possible uses of this phrase is that "Red" exists apart
from any object that is red. Still, this seems perplexing to
us. It is hard to imagine how red exists. This is our aporia
here.

The same idea --that this is a metaphysical statement about red
--finds expression again when we say such a thing as that red is timeless,
and perhaps still more strongly in the word "indestructible".

That is, there are many ways to express this
metaphysical thought that "red exists" beyond red objects and particular
language games. Sometimes we say that it is "timeless" or
"indestructible."

But what we really want is simply to take "Red exists" as the
statement: the word "red" has a meaning. Or perhaps better: "Red does not
exist" as " 'Red' has no meaning".

In other words, if we are tempted to say "red exists"
then we are pointing out that the word red has a meaning. Or if we
say that "grue" does not exist," this is a way of saying that the word
"grue" has no meaning.

Only we do not want to say that that expression says this, but that
this is what it would have to be saying if it meant anything. But that it
contradicts itself in the attempt to say it --just because red
exists 'in its own right'. Whereas the only contradiction lies in
something like this: the proposition looks as if it were about the
colour, while it is supposed to be saying something about the use of the
word "red".

But it seems as though the statement "Red exists" is
asserting a truth about red, not just giving us the rules of the language
(that the word 'red' has meaning. The formulation fools us because
it is so similar to the formulation we would use if we were talking about
a thing and not about meaning, as if I would say, "The document you have
been looking for, I have found out that it exists," it would be clear that
I am not talking about word definitions but about the document
existing. Still, the formulations seem so similar.

--In reality, however, we quite readily say that a particular colour
exists; and that is as much as to say that something exists that has that
colour. And the first expression is no less accurate than the second;
particularly where 'what has the colour' is not a physical object.

But our language does not make a distinction between
these ways of using the phrase "red exists." Within the rules of our
language, both uses are equally correct.

59. "A name signifies only what is an
element of reality. What cannot be destroyed; what remains the same in all
changes."

The Augustine's voice
again. This voice tells us: If "red exists" it signifies something
that cannot be destroyed.

-- But what is that? --Why, it swam before our minds as we said
the sentence! This was the very expression of a quite particular image: of
a particular picture which we want to use. For certainly experience does
not shew us these elements. We see component parts of something composite
(of a chair, for instance). We say that the back is part of the chair, but
is in turn itself composed of several bits of wood; while a leg is a
simple component part. We also see a whole which changes (is destroyed)
while its component parts remain unchanged. These are the materials from
which we construct that picture of reality.

This is the aporetic voice speaking. It says,
:isn't there a way in which this seems compelling? From within the
fly bottle? Doesn't it sometimes happen that when you say "chair"
you see something like a chair flash before your mind's eye? Well,
then, maybe we should say that this ghostly image is what the word 'chair'
refers to. It is the idea, perhaps, that Plato had in mind when he
constructed his theory of ideas.